Updated 15 April 2022
Building Three is one of three locations in Somerset run by the provider, Integrated Pathology Partnerships. Building Three is a purpose designed fully equipped laboratory. It provides routine pathology services excluding blood transfusion, to primary and secondary care providers across Somerset and a private contract for sexual health testing in London. It is part of an NHS Joint Venture with Integrated Pathology Partnerships, Somerset NHS Foundation Trust and Yeovil District Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.
The centre is located within an industrial estate and the building comprises a set of self-contained laboratories providing analysis in the disciplines of clinical chemistry, haematology, microbiology, histology and cytology. The provider operates a ‘hub and spoke’ design for services. The hub is an offsite state of the art laboratory (Building Three) to process ‘non-acute’ work. The spokes are termed ‘Essential Service Laboratories’ (ESLs) providing acute services designed to meet the clinical needs of Taunton and Yeovil hospitals.
To get to the heart of patients’ experiences of care and treatment, we ask the same five questions of all services: are they safe, effective, caring, responsive to people's needs, and well-led? We did not inspect the caring domain at this inspection as the laboratory does not have any direct contact with patients.
The provider is registered to provide the following regulated activity
- Diagnostic and screening procedures
The location has a registered manager in post since 2020. Registered managers have a legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act and associated regulations about how the service is run.
The provider employed 202 members of staff across the three sites. Technical and managerial staff are employed by Integrated Pathology Partnerships while clinical staff are employed by partners in the joint venture with Somerset NHS Foundation Trust and Yeovil District Hospital Foundation Trust.
The previous inspection of this service was March 2013 when the provider had met the standards but was not rated.
We inspected this service using our comprehensive inspection methodology. We carried out the unannounced inspection on 15 February 2022.